Coping With Digital Rights Management

Slides from my presentation on digital rights at the eduSource Industry Forum last week in Toronto. In that presentation I went into an interesting digression on the nature of learning objects. Here was my argument in a nutshell (printed here because it doesn't exist like this elsewhere). Yes, the reference to a certain prop is real. My main point is that there is no reason to restrict a priori what counts as a learning object. Yes, a paper tissue is an extreme example. But: * whether something counts as a learning object depends on whether it can be used to teach or learn, and this can only be determined by its use, not by its nature * people will want to use a wide variety of objects, including even (in at least one case) a used tissue, in order to teach or learn * no good will come, therefore, of limiting a priori what objects will count as learning objects and what objects will not.